usb on technabob...

A Japanese company called solidalliance has come up with Mnemosyne, an aluminum cube that holds an otherwise ordinary 16GB flash drive inside. But it’s not that simple: the cube is actually a puzzle.

It’s made of smaller pieces that you have to slide apart before you can get to the flash drive. That’s the flash drive right there, the one…

While everyone (mostly Brando) was going crazy making all sorts of gadget designs like panda paper shredders and white bread wrist rests, the obvious connection between the multi-tentacled octopus and anything that has to do with wires or cords remained untapped. So I think I speak for everyone when I say: USB Octopus Hub, we’ve been expecting you. You’re actually…

Created by “microwave expert” Gordon Andrews and designer Stephen Frazer in partnership with Heinz, the Beanzawave is the world’s smallest portable microwave. It’s powered via USB and uses “a combination of mobile phone frequencies” to heat whatever you put in there. Uhuh. I see. *chucks phone out the window*

Heinz, maker of Snap Pots, commissioned Andrews and Frazer to come…

These aren’t the first Star Wars themed flash drives I’ve seen, but they do have the biggest heads I’ve seen on a Star Wars flash drive, so at least they’ve got that going for them.

The bobblehead-esque USB drives feature the likenesses of Darth Vader,Yoda, a Stormtrooper and Boba Fett, and each one stores 2GB of data, which isn’t a whole lot,…

Sure, you can charge your USB gadgets with that boring old A/C adapter that the factory shipped with your electronics, but why would you want to do that if you could have one that looks like this?

These goofy looking Penguin chargers juice up any gadget that can plug into a USB connector.

You can also cram the battery from…

Monster hasn’t had a great year, what with their fake performance tests and their un-endorsements. But that doesn’t mean that the company is 100% crap. Take their Outlets To Go power strip with USB port for example. It’s a well-thought out product that’s geared primarily for travelers – packing 3 outlets in a slim and light form – but it’s…

The gadgets that Brando sells are often weird but they’re mostly affordable. GeekStuff4U has it the other way around: slightly weird gadgets that really hurt the pockets. Case in point: handmade frog and duck USB flash disks. Why? I mean, sure, they look nice, but… Why?

Okay I must admit, USB frog looks cool. He looks like a tatooed alien…

Computex was over a week ago, but let’s jump back in time one last time and let’s take a look at this yummy piece of tech: Cideko’s Air Keyboard. The only thing that’s kinda stupid about this device is its name, because it’s not just a wireless keyboard, it’s also a mouse and a remote control.

Like a lot of…

Remember Tengu? You know, the little LED guy who moves his pixel block mouth to the sounds it hears?
Well Tengu is back, and this time, he’s got some new looks. Tengu Allstars are Crispin Jones’ latest creation. These new members of the Tengu family get some serious attitude thanks to the addition of hair and little accessories. There are…

iHome’s new iConnect USB keyboard makes it easier for iPhone and iPod owners to connect their devices with their computers with its dedicated dock.

That’s the Mac version. As you can see the iConnect also has the requisite multimedia control keys. It also has a couple of USB ports – but since the keyboard connects via USB you’re really only…

Welcome to another edition of Cute or Stupid?, a feature that I personally don’t want to do anymore but fate seems to want me to continue, so. Here we go: up for deliberation is the Super Mini Cube, allegedly the world’s tiniest speaker. Measuring a scant 26mm (1.02 inches) on each side, the “no bulky” speaker delivers a dust-blowing 0.8…

The Neatdesk scanner from The Neat Company is touted as a digital filing cabinet. Thanks to its unique three-slot tray, Neatdesk can “scan up to 10 receipts, biz cards and standard-size documents in a single batch.” And if you have documents printed in A4-sized paper, just remove the tray and Neatdesk can handle up to 50 of them at once.…

That’s the story of gadgets right there. They start out big and clunky, but pretty soon they’ll be replaced with better and smaller versions of themselves. I still remember the early “mobile” phones, which were mobile only in the theoretical sense of the word. Those brick phones were gigantic and heavy. Same with portable audio players. And now we have…

That’s right folks. Brando – who else – are selling a spy camcorder that looks like a lighter, but the most amazing thing about it is not its disguise but its audio capturing device, something called a “mircophone.”

And just to prove to the world that this isn’t just the work of a drunken proofreader, here’s another shot of the spy…

Geared towards schools and businesses, Nexcopy’s modular 60-port USB duplicator is a Windows-based device that allows for quick and easy data distribution. It’s perfect for making a ton of copies of Linux distros, or perhaps copying student submissions in one go.

The duplicator can be used as a single 60-port device or as three separate 20-port devices. The duplicator only…